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ISO one great rye bread recipe

May 29, 2007 - 7:21pm

Cooky

ISO one great rye bread recipe

Hey, y'all. I have finally decided to branch out and give honest-to-gosh rye bread a whirl. I have a nice rye starter working, and I'd love to use it to recreate the fabulous rye I had in southern Germany lo these many years ago. It was medium brown inside -- not as dark as pumpernickel -- with a dark, glossy, chewy crust and a fantastic spongy texture. And oh yeah, the taste. Magnifico. (My memory may be slightly colored by the fact that when I was eating this bread I was a hungry youn'un schlepping a 50-pound pack across the byways of Europe. But it really was delish.)

I've never found quite the same thing in this country, so I'm hoping that somebody on The Loaf may recognize the type of bread I'm talking about, and perhaps have a recipe that might come close to reproducing it.

Mix all ingredients into a dough and knead till smooth and elastic. Let rest 30 minutes. Put into the desired shape and form and eventually bake in preheated oven 200°c for 65 minutes.

Here is one to start out on. I think the spices make the "difference" you refer to.

The rye can also be reduced and wheat increased, add part of flour mixture and water to your starter to increase starter to about 300 gm. Let stand until it doubles and then add rest of ingredients (I would add a two teaspoons of brown sugar to rest of water) with or without the yeast to make dough. It is not necessary to let rye dough double before shaping but I do recommend using a lined or flowered bowl or basket to proof before baking (top of loaf down). Gently overturn onto baking parchment, spray with water, score and bake. A cold oven can also be used add aprox. 10 minutes to baking time if round loaf. Should you happen to overproof, and this can easily happen, reshape, or roll it up using a little more flour and let it proof again.

Is "rye bread flour" different than "rye flour".....I've heard that going much more than 20-30% rye is going to majorly compromise texture due to low gluten in rye. Is this high percentage of rye 'allowed' because it is a sourdough recipe? Thanks.

That sounds like a good question. Lets see, the recipe above came from the mixed spice jar (it's in China). My Roggenmehl or Rye Flour bag also has a recipe...

It says for a 1100 gm loaf: 500 g rye flour T 960 (not rye bread flour) 250g 10-grain flour or AP wheat flour, 15g sourdough extract, 19g salt, 15g cake yeast or 5 g instant yeast, 540 ml warm water (that 1100g must be after baking...) and to your own taste add bread spice or caraway. Mix everything slowly to a dough and rest 30 min. in a warm place. Briefly kneed, shape into loaf and let proof in a form 45 minutes warm and covered. Carefully roll onto baking sheet, eventually dust with flour and/or slash and bake in preheated oven 220°c 60min with water standing in oven for steam. I would say that was 75% rye. I do think souring the rye does make it more manageable. I looked up the flour to find out if anything is added, I think it is pure normal ground. More recipies at www.muehle.at/rezepte

BTW This morning's ads has a special on rye loaves with pumkin seeds and rye loaves with yoghurt on special. Mini Oven

My breadmaking journey has been as much a search for good rye bread as anything else. I can't claim to be there yet, but based on what I have learned over the last two years I would recommend that you work though the following steps in order:

The straight "Levy's Real Jewish Rye" in Rose Levy-Beranbaum's _The Bread Bible_ . Good way to get started and tastes good. You can also gradually add more rye and/or pumpernickel meal, but ultimately you will not be satisfied.

Meanwhile, buy and start reading Hammelman's _Bread_ including the section on rye flour and the very long chapter on rye bread.

Once you have some experience with sourdough, try one of Hammelman's recipes. Maybe start with the 60% rye then work your way up in rye percentage and percent of pumpernickel meal, cracked rye,and rye chops.

I also found a link to a BBC recipe for Danish Rye using beer and sourdough on the Daily Bread Links section of this site, but I don't have it handy. That was quite good too.

You will probably also need to order pumpernickel meal from Bob's Red Mill (I have never seen it in a store). King Arthur's pumpernickel flour is really a dark rye flour one step coarser than the standard (US) dark rye. It is quite good but my understanding is that when German recipes call for pumpernickel they mean the BRM-type meal. I haven't found a source for rye chops in the midwest US yet (although I am restricted to nut-free products which limits the search).

Cooky ... for some visual examples of classic German Ryes, check out the web pages for North America's premier German bread bakery, Dimpflmeier's in Toronto. As mentioned previously it is probably farmer's Rye of maybe Black Forest Rye.

These are the guys that Turned me on to bread! Their bread is not just bread; it is totally awesome and I have a catalogue of theirs here as I write. They will ship to you and adjust shipping costs with size of purchase. These are the guys that are making bread the way I want to: thin chewy crust, light, soft crumb with no holes, sourdough, and awesome taste. I want to make their bread but not buy it. In NY state it is sold via Karl Ehmer meat stores.

If anyone has any info on how they do their bread PLEASE share the info with me. This forum likes mostly Italian stuff with big wholes which is nice, but this other bread is German and lists malt as one of the ingredients. You just Can Not Believe what it tastes like. I have frozen some of it-cryogenics?- and keep it as a reminder of something I want to duplicate / achieve before I die, but doubt I ever will.

Maybe MiniOven knows what I am talking about when mentioning the German rye bread. All I know is that these folks have done IT! and I am so glad someone else out there knows about it.

A medium-textured, firm European sourdough. This bread is a favorite. No seeds & lots of old world flavor.

1lb(s) | 2lb(s)(u) | 4lb(s)(u) | 7lb(u)454g | 907g | 1.8kg | 3.18kg

The Klosterbrot is an old Sourthern German recipe. Amedium texture rye bread and is stone baked. Peter Rinehart or Jeff Hammelman talks in his book about the cool creamy taste of an excellent slice of bread and this bread has it.

If anyone knows how to make this I would love to learn. Until today, I thought that I was the only one who knew about these people. I post questions reference German bread but there is no resonance on TFL so I let it drop, since people here love the Italian and French bread. But now I realize I am not alone in enjoying the German bread. MiniOven, can you shed some light on this Fantastic bread, or do the Austrians do it diffently from the Germans when it comes to bread. UUgggghhh I love this stuff....countryboy

Google roggenbrot and you'll find more info also written in English. Rye is pretty much the standard here in Austria. One of my favorites is a small oval loaf chucked full of whole english walnuts served best with butter and blue cheese. Oh, If you want a finer crumb, then knock the dough down a few times or "slam it" on counter top a few times (good aggression therapy) before a final shape and don't let it proof longer than 30 minutes. If you check my blog, under "spices of Bread" there are links to this recipe with baker percentages. Have fun. I will see if I can put them here.

Was on a german link and stumbled onto Sourdough Flavor made from sourdough dried to a powder. It is used in combination with water and Rye flour to sour. The article went on to explain how rye flour is best when soured and that using this method combined with com yeast is more reliable than using normal sourdough only and even makes a better, more rounded loaf. (the guy is also selling the stuff) The recommended recipe was 50/50 with rye/wheat flours. The Sourdough flavour is called SS25 and has many of same ingredients as a dough enhancer as well:

Okay, I can see I've got a lot more practice ahead of me on this rye business. I tried Mini's upthread recipe (minus the spices), using the 300g starter, and ended up with very sour, very dense none-too-inspiring loaves. I'll have to give it a whirl with the less-starter-plus-yeast version and see how that goes.

Cooky, My first try at Mini's farmers rye was a huge disaster also. For starters I used a linen lined basket to hold the large loaf. It didn't really rise much and when it came out of the basket it had no shape to speak of. It was a waffely under inflated mess. I slashed it for amusement only and baked it after waiting a couple hours to re-inflate. The end result was, no oven spring and the ugliest loaf ever. I was not happy about that attempt.

My next attempt, I decided that the failure of the dough to act as expected was a result of not building any gluten structure. So I folded, french folded, stretched and folded some more and kneaded a little, ok a lot. Finally I had the semblance of a stretchy dough which I figured would rise. It did rise and baked as well as any other high % whole grain dough I have made has.

I wish jmonkey or floyd would jump in with some sound advice on this thread. I still haven't gotten to a point where I understand how to make a decent WW or Rye bread. Tomsbread got me started in the right direction with the long cold ferments which I think helps.

Anyway Cooky, don't despair. Rye bread of any sort is a totally different animal.

The more I read about rye baking, the more it becomes clear that it is important to keep a lid on the percentage of rye flour that goes into the formula. Apparently, if rye accounts for too much of the total weight, no amount of coddling will give you the gluten-y texture necessary to get a true rise and/or oven spring. Now, if you're looking for a really dense, Old World kind of loaf (viz., genuine pumpernickel) rising and oven spring are not reallly issues.

Anyhoo, I'm not giving up. Once I get a loaf that approximates my dream rye, I'll be back w/pix and details.

might help. My last loaf was mostly rye, coarse spelt, and a little AP wheat. I think there's something in mixing. I use a wisk when combining my ingredients. First I dump in my sourdough, then I add water and sugar wisk it and add spelt, and half of the rye, then I wisk and wisk, maybe 3 minutes or longer, add salt and SLOWLY add more rye wisking all the time, when it's too stiff for my standard wisk, I change to a large wooded rice spoon and start adding the AP flour. Then I let it sit 30 minutes. Then I knead in more AP til I have a nice ball of dough. These instructions are pretty flexible because I took a 2 hour pause between wisking half the rye and adding the salt. Had a few errands to run and kneaded the dough, waited 30 minutes and shaped to proof a long oval loaf on a teflon floured (1part rice flour to 4 parts AP flour) dish tower cradled inside my glass chicken roaster with a rolled up towel on each side. I gently rolled it over one hour later onto parchment paper and placed it gently into the glass chicken roaster, slashed it, put the other glass half on top and stuck it into my cold oven. Set the control to 250°c with hot air and watched it. I figure with the lid on, the convection heats the glass quickly but won't have the drying effects or long delay of pre-heating. After 10 minutes the oven thermometer showed 250°c so I turned it down just a bit, keeping eye on the gauge. Turned it down to 190° (gauge 220°c) eventually and the rye/spelt loaf was done in 40 minutes. Left the lid on the whole time and still had a crunchy crust. So, no pre-heat and high temp with low temp setting. Ha! --Mini Oven

how to say this, but my experience with rye comes from a dumper recipe. I don't think the scales is even out when I put it together. I more or less dump it together. Sit down, I know you're in shock.

Let me try to figure out why your bread didn't work for you. When you said it didn't rise, that was the first clue. Lets back up then. Take the same recipe (Farmer's rye at the top of page). Now change it to 60%rye and 40% Bread wheat flour or AP wheat. Now mix yourself about 300gm of starter (We're looking at about 1.2 kg loaf before baking) with a good amount of rye flour, same as the recipe 60/40 with 100% hydration (don't forget to subtract from the recipe). If you think it's too thick, add another 50ml of water, no problemo. When it's up and going pour it into a bowl and add water (about 350ml) and a two teaspoons of sugar, wisk to make it blend well then add your rye flour, wisk it about 2-3 min. It should be nice and goopy. Here is where you can add other things like spices and seeds, grated cooked potato whatever. Now just cover it and forget it for a couple of hours so the rye can sour. When you come back work in the rest of the ingredients gradually by hand (save a little flour for kneeding) and flop it out of your bowl and knead it. It's not a sin. I know you like to fold but rye wants you to play with it. There is a certain texture you're looking for.

OK so now you're kneading it with white wheat flour and it sticks to your fingers, and you put some flour on your fingers to rub it off and the lumps get worked back into the dough, and you use your bench scraper to clean off the counter, and you use some more flour and knead some more. Ok so what are we looking for? Well, the sticky starts to change from short sticky to long sticky and stops sticking so much. I think 5 minutes of kneading ought to be about right. (Now if you want a finer texture, put it back in the oiled bowl for 30 minutes to let it rise, then, knock it down.)

Make it into a nice round ball (quickly or it will stick) and plop it into a floured cloth lined basket to proof. It will rise and keep an eye on it. Tempertures are warmer now and it can happen fast somewhere between 30 min to 45 min. Now when it's starting to look puffy but far from doubled, roll it gently out onto parchment and slash. if you want to wait a few minutes and let it rise some more, fine but not more than 15 minutes by these summer temperatures. Hamelman and others suggest slashing rye before final proof and baking pre-heated high heat (460°F)with steam and reduce after 15 minutes (440°F).

Oh and Eric, if you want to recycle your flat loaf, crumble it up and use half into a new loaf with white flour. That is if it's not too old. The trick is to watch the amount of salt. -- Mini Oven

Recipe at the top of this thread and reading the http site and comparing the author's two versions of this recipe. In the other he uses less spice but 500g sourdough (instead of 16g mentioned or even the 300g Mentioned just above) using 500g Rye flour and suggests starting the day before baking! That would mean sour preferment on almost all the rye! I found a picture of a flattish dense loaf too at that site. I think the other recipe forgot to subtract (calculate) the sourdough from the recipe. The % at chart top refer to reducing and increasing the recipe. I never bother with malt, I use brown sugar. In reading the sourdough recipe 2, (a third version) White flour is increased almost like my above suggestion. --Mini Oven

beef. Just a little bit in the sandwich as a pickle. It is a lot like sourkraut in that it's made with cabbage but with generous addition of thinly sliced bell peppers, onion, a little carrot for color and maybe celery and caraway seed , vinegar, salt, sugar. First brined, then hot packed. Very easy.

I suppose swiss cheese and kraut would make a Rueben Sandwich. Sometimes I just squeeze out the juice from the sourkraut and add fresh oil and vinegar with a few seasonings for a salad. Save the sourkraut juice, very healthy to drink and can also be used to refresh colors in wool rugs. (don't spit on keyboard please) Cabbage uses laccto beasties to turn into sourkraut and kimchee.

Did everyone go into shock with my dumper statement? I am pretty good at guessing amounts. I do use my scales when I'm feeling "mad scientistic." --Mini Oven

Start with a solid large head of cabbage, one small to medium white onion, a large yellow bell pepper, two or three large green bell peppers or a hearty handful of skinny hungarian mild peppers, a carrot, a stalk of celery, a small red bell pepper or pimento (used for color, don't have one, forget it) Wash, remove stems and cores and Slice everything very thin and decorative. Peel and grate carrot with small hole grater or cut into toothpick thin pieces.

Mix all vegies together in a large plastic bowl and sprinkle with about 3 Tablespoons or more of table salt. Press firmly to flatten down into bowl and just cover with cold water.

Now weigh everything together. To calculate the number of jars for canning, take the total weight and subtract bowl weight. This is the pusta salad volume and should be distributed among the jars. (Example: Say the bowl weighs 200g and with everything together it comes out to 4000g exactly. The salad weight is then 3800g and the jars hold 250 ml each. 3800/250 = 15.2 jars I would need 15 jars. If there are all different size jars, add them up till combined volume is 3800ml.)

Cover the surface with plastic wrap pressing out air bubbles and let it sit room temp for about 4 hours.

Remove vegetables from bowl by taking handfulls and squeezing out all the salt water, set aside. Empty bowl of salt water, rinse and put squeezed vegetables back in and

weigh it to get vegie weight. Now take the total weight and subtract vegie weight and bowl weight ...that brings us to how much liquid we need to pack the salad into jars. The liquid should be mixture of 4 parts 5% vinegar with 1 part water plus some sugar (taste and determine personal preference --roughly 30-60g) and about 2 tablespoons of caraway seeds. Keep in mind the vinegar will weaken as it dilutes with salad.

Add fresh cool clean water to the vegetables to cover, stir gently and squeeze out. Do this washing process again and let drain in a large colander.

Now we need two pots. One, a small sauce pan of boiling water to roll cleans jars in for about a minute each. Carefully take out and invert onto a folded clean kitchen towel. Do the same with the lids, tonges, spoon, and funnel. They should be rust and knick free.

And a very large pot to boil the vinegar, sugar and caraway and then add the vegetables to just boil. Now working quickly and using a tonges, pack all jars loosely and then top off with liquid leaving at least 1 cm head space to form a vacuum seal. Distribute the sunken caraway seeds into all jars and screw on lids. Allow to cool. Check to see that all lids have sealed. Label and store at least one week before opening. Any jars that didn't seal should be put into the fridge and eaten as soon as possible.

Bob if you make that Pusta Salad would you take some photos of it and post them. It sounds like a fancy cold slaw and a delicious mix. I do a fish boil in the fall and I'm getting tired with my usual slaw that I serve with the fish. It tastes great but a change would be nice.

But if you eat ocean fish for the iodine content in it, be careful not to eat it with the cabbage family of vegetables for they block its absorption.

Pusta salad is more like pickles but also good raw (sometimes never making the jar) with less vinegar and oil and corn syrup/ice water and ground caraway, a few herbs, yes, a nice salad change. Or are you thinking creamy? I like grated zuchini or cucumbers instead of cabbage in slaw too. --Mini

Ocean fish in a fish boil in the Great Lakes? Sorry that would get you strung up around here. Only Lake Superior White Fish for me. Deep cold water makes wonderful fish. I serve it with slaw and bread (there's the tie in:>)

Well we wouldn't want you strung up, now. Would that be a Coho? Wait, that's a salmon, a Chinnook maybe. Oops, another salmon..... I know! It's a Coregonus clupeaformis!Don't you just love the name? Sounds like a support bra! In other words...White fish. :) --Mini Oven

Mini, I just found this thread. I'm not the least bit shocked that you don't normally measure ingredients. I don't for most of the things I cook, because I know how the food should look, taste, feel, etc. at various stages. I just hope I someday develop your intuitive feel for baking.

That said, I can't wait until my new kitchen scale & Peter Reinhardt whole grain bread book get here. I think they'll both go a long way to helping me develop that feel. :)

Try googling Corn Jewish Rye. That's the one I use. I don't have access to the recipe here at work or I would send it to you. It is great with butter and Swiss Cheese, so I think it would make a great Ruben.

and well rounded, semi firm crumb, sharp knife (when I write sharp knife, that is to say a bread knife is a waste of time) to cut and the spelt adds a sweetness. The starter was one developed weeks before from an instant package and was baked on the 12th of June, reference to 13 June thread. I call him Apkg. :)

I started out with about 300g starter (refreshed 20g/150g/150g) in my bowl and added ingredients stirring with a wisk. I would say there was at least 350g water and a coffee mug (250ml volume) of spelt in there.

It's a dumper recipe. I know, I know, but I get into these "creative swings" and usually starts with sizing up my flour and checking my starter. These days, I would never bake a rye without a starter, souring it first, even if the rye is just a little, I'd moisten it with sourdough/water or a little apple vinegar/water or orange juice. Sure it's sticky but that's typical of rye. Just dip your hands often in flour and rub them together to keep them from crusting up with dough. Or you can wet them, up to you. I find it easy to add water to rye dough anytime during the mixing, it works in quickly. Some prefer a mixer, I love to get my hands in it.

My spelt flour was berries thrown into a kitchen blender, chopper attachment, nothing fancy. They begged to be soaked so leaving them to soak for 2 hours with the rye did several wonderful things to my dough: gave the sourdough beasties a chance to develop more, soak the spelt to soften and swell, and soured the rye to bring out it's glue & stretch. The wheat flour is used mostly to thicken up the dough while kneading so it can't be more than 100g. My loaves are generally between 950g and 1200g. My "rig" is practical, the lid keeps dough moist while proofing (no plastic wrap here!) and sits on the oven rack while baking.

Last night mixed up about 200g water with 160g Rye flour plus a good tablespoon of spices and two level tablespoon of very ripe sour starter (have one starter that sits out to "ripen" and then gets put in the fridge) to sour the rye flour.

Around noon today, added whipping cream, more water and two level teaspoons of commercial yeast, a tablespoon of brown sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons of table salt. Then more Rye flour till it had the consistancy of cookie dough. Then let it rest 30 min and kneaded in more rye flour to make one kilo. Turned into oiled bowl to bulk rise still looking like cookie dough. Less than one hour later, looked a little larger and carefully rolled out onto my hands and folded in half and gently in half again, rounded the corners and laid into an oiled and floured casserole. Deeply slashed the top, put on glass cover and let sit 30 minutes. Put into cold oven over back electrode, 220°c 40minutes turning dish 180° half way through the bake.

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